Free Speech, Religious Freedom, the University, and Distress

During the summer of 2021, the Wilberforce Academy held its annual meeting at Worcester College, Oxford.  On the agenda was discussion of abortion and homosexuality from an orthodox, Christian understanding.  Subsequently, the Provost of the college, David Isaac, apologised to students from the college (on summer break) for allowing the college’s facilities to be used to host the event—and this despite his previous record of defending free speech at institutes of higher learning.[1]  An excellent response to this decision has been published as an open letter from the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Toby Young.[2]  What Provost Isaac appears rather clearly to have done is set his college on a path to fall afoul of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill aimed at those opposed to freedom of speech by de-platforming speakers, cancelling classes, and so forth at British universities in order to advance their own viewpoints and not allow others to present their views.

The European discussion of free speech has lagged far behind the United States of America, which secured such freedom in its First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This incident highlights the problems facing cultures as they move decidedly away from their Christian heritage towards something else as yet undefined.  This involves deconstruction and cancelation while yet still uncomfortable with opposing freedom.  Yet freedom is clearly a roadblock in Late Postmodern tribalism.  As but another example of how this is developing in England, the Court of Appeal in England and Wales has ruled against a Christian foster child agency for upholding its Christian value that children should be given a home in families of a father and mother—not in homes with some new definition of ‘marriage’.[3]  England still has an official religion—the Church of England—and yet it is in the United States that religious freedom is not so easily dismissed because of the First Amendment.  The Amendment prohibits laws that impede the free exercise of religion, which is precisely what the Court of Appeal is doing by forbidding the foster child agency to operate according to its Christian convictions.  Of course, America’s Title IX is the route being used to undermine the First Amendment’s prohibition against laws prohibiting the free exercise of religion.  Moreover, the US Supreme Court infamously redefined the legal definition of ‘marriage’ (Obergefell vs. Hodges in 2015)—a subjective outrage against millennia of civilizations.  Both the UK and the USA are on trajectories to overthrow Christian values of the past and establish new laws and practices for a post-Christian culture, but paths to these unfortunate ends are slightly different.

European protection of speech has tended to start not from a view on freedom but from a concern about ‘hate speech.’  This is why the UK’s Higher Education Bill is so important, introducing freedom as the operating value.  Otherwise, one ends up with a prohibition of free speech on the flimsy grounds that allowing others to use college facilities for a conference has caused students ‘significant distress’ by the Wilberforce Academy’s defense of long-held beliefs in ‘Christian’ England that have come to be derided only within the last generation.

Some reflection on how changing values are expressing themselves in the changing culture might be helpful.  In the post-Enlightenment period of Modernity, which I would consider to be an approximately 200-year period ending around 1980, freedom was upheld as a cardinal virtue.  It was enshrined in the American and French Revolutions of the late 1700s, attended with another cardinal virtue of equality.  These virtues were sustained by convictions in Modernity that were based in creation (America) or nature (France)—universal, objective truths.  Truths guaranteed certain ‘rights’ that were not attached to one or another group but that were for all human beings.  A Judeo-Christian understanding of creation, that all humans are created in the image of God, or a scientific interpretation that required a view of objective truth (the laws of the universe) could come together to guarantee such rights.  The redesigned chapel of Worcester College in the mid-19^th century contains both images of faith (e.g., Christ’s death on a cross to save us from our sins) and creation or nature (animal carvings, e.g., on pews)—attesting to belief in objective truth in both faith and science. Though a Deist and apparently not a Christian, Thomas Jefferson still thought in universal terms and believed in human rights because of them, as his wording in the Declaration of Independence demonstrates: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’  Even as many Modernists turned away from Christianity, they continued to uphold a concept of rights based on universal truths—so much so that the United Nations Charter in 1948 is wholly dependent on the Modernist concept of ‘rights,’ being titled, ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights.’

Postmodernity, with roots back to Jean-Jacque Rousseau and developed by others like Friedrich Nietzsche under different names (‘Romanticism,’ ‘Existentialism’), found its day in the sunlight of Western culture sometime around 1980.  It became a defined movement earlier in some fields of study, such as architecture.  It seems to have gained particular force in the university in the 1970s as historical and scientific studies gave way to literary interpretations.  Under the reign of the literature department in the university, meaning was severed from the author and his or her intention, and the pursuit of truth was replaced with interpretation.  Readers were encouraged to introduce their own interpretations into discussions around texts, not to declare one reading as the right reading.  New virtues derived from new values were moved into the list of cardinal virtues alongside freedom and equality: diversity, tolerance, and inclusion.  These new virtues created a tension with the older notion of the purpose of a university to discover universal truth through the various disciplines.  Literary studies insisted, on the contrary, on the truism (!) that there was no truth, only interpretations, and virtues like diversity, tolerance, and inclusion encouraged novel interpretations for novelty's sake.  The perspective of Modernity that there was ‘truth’ was considered negatively as a totalising, monocultural metanarrative.  Alongside the interest in novelty was a concern to deconstruct hegemonic authorities and established views of the past.  Freedom, still a cardinal virtue, was redefined by its new fellows.  It had to shift from being a virtue within a divinely created or natural world of objective truth to a virtue within a personally created or subjective world.  Politicians trained in this period of Early Postmodernity will speak of ‘his’ or ‘her’ truth—there is, in this world of subjectivity, no such thing as ‘truth.’  Freedom became the right to live according to one’s own, subjectively created reality.  In Early Postmodernity, freedom of speech could still be valued, albeit now as a defense of the value of subjectivity and related virtues like diversity.

Advocates of Early Postmodernity abound but are, however, out of date, since the culture has moved on to Late Postmodernity, as Worcester College demonstrates.  One hears the same person articulating rhetoric from Early Postmodernity but advocating Late Postmodernity.  The shift from the dominance of the literature department to the dominance of the social sciences has come quickly, with too few understanding the significance of this.  Truth is now said to be neither factual nor subjective (and this objectively stated) but is defined functionally according to some other values in Late Postmodernity.  This is Critical Theory in a nutshell.  Politics, economics, anthropology, psychology, and sociology (the social sciences) are studies about how things work, but they evaluate how things work based on values derived not from efficiency but from some view of ‘the good.’  Late Postmodernity is characterised by tribalism—hence the shift to the ‘social’ sciences over against individualism that was based on universalism during Modernity and diversity in Postmodernity.  On this view, freedom is actually problematic, and it would be fair to say that Late Postmodernity has removed freedom from the list of cardinal virtues for Western society.  It has become, at best, a respected, great grandfather now in his dotage, consigned to a corner chair out the way of his active progeny.  Late Postmodernists also dislike tolerance as a virtue, unless it is reserved for a circle around their own views alone.  Someone else’s ‘free speech’ must not be tolerated if it undermines ‘the good.’  In Late Postmodernity, ‘the good’ can only be defined by what the dominant tribe declares it to be.  There are no rational arguments, only emotional inclinations.

So, then, the Provost of Worcester College finds himself in the awkward position of an Alice in Wonderland.  A group, the Wilberforce Academy, shows up for a conference that upholds the Christian tradition that the college’s forebears would equally have defended and that, even in the long centuries of Modernity, would have been upheld.  Founded originally as Gloucester College in 1283 by 13 Benedictine monks, its heritage was certainly for centuries favourable towards Christian faith and ethics.  It is met, however, by young minds still in their formative stages but already formed by Early Postmodern academics only lately come into the sunlight in academic circles.  These views elevated diversity and tolerance to cardinal virtue status but introduced deconstructivism as a means by which to introduce and champion new views over old views.  Yet the students are Late Postmoderns, lacking an interest in diversity and tolerance, extending the deconstruction programme of Early Postmodernity with their tribal, cancel culture activism.  Freedom is, on this scheme, offered only to entitled groups and is not tendered to others.  As such, it is not only demoted to a lesser virtue but is redefined.  In its place is a psychological value, negatively defined—‘not causing distress’—which rejects freedom, diversity, and tolerance in order to establish a tribal society based on subjectively chosen, emotive values.

The Church of England, moreover, has ridden the culture’s wave right to shore.  It offers no critique of Late Postmodernity for it has lost its own moorings in the historic faith.  It is, as Ezra Pound might have put it, an ‘old bitch gone in the teeth.’  The Church of Wales has wholly embraced this climate change, leaving Evangelicals stranded on a sandbank amidst the tidal surge, too late in responding to the weather warnings.  Islam will prove eventually to be the great challenge to the West’s Late Postmodernity as it emerges with an entirely different understanding of ‘truth,’ ‘freedom,’ and other virtues and values.  Let in the front door as an intersectional saint by Late Postmoderns, it will eventually reveal its contrary values in Europe to those who still do not understand.  It shares with Late Postmodernity a commitment to intolerance of anything that causes distress, but defines what causes distress and for whom totally differently.  And it shares with it an intolerance of freedom, valuing above all submission. This leaves us all intrigued to see if the UK government will be able to enforce its defense of free speech in the current and emerging context. Already there are indications that the Higher Education Bill will be undermined through a variety of practices in universities, such as processes for recruitment and grant applications.[4] 

In this post-Christian, Late Postmodern world, about all that Christians can do is point out the glaring inconsistencies to tribal warlords who monitor success by how much self-concocted, psychological distress the tribe is under at any one time.  Fear of inconsistency is hardly a cure for persons seeking a psychiatrist’s couch under great distress.  And, if the current crop of Worcester College students passing through its halls in a brief three years find the Wilberforce Academy’s Christian views distressing, they must surely find their own age-old prayer tradition before meals a matter of great distress too.  The prayer begins with, ‘We unhappy and unworthy men’—distress appears to be a feature of the college’s men and women.  It further appeals to God to feed them above all with ‘the true bread of heaven, the eternal Word of God, Jesus Christ our Lord.’  This affirmation of God, commitment to Christ’s Lordship, and desire for God’s Word that is prayed at the college but is also the bedrock of the Wilberforce Academy’s values stands squarely opposed to Late Postmodernity and must cause the already distressed students a tidal wave of more distress.  Yet their new Provost’s response so far is to drown out the freedom of speech that centuries of Worcester College students enjoyed. In tribal Postmodernity, only certain people’s distress counts.

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[1] See the story: https://www.christiantoday.com/article/oxford.college.apologises.for.hosting.christian.concern.training.event/137437.htm (accessed 29 September, 2021).

[2] See online: https://freespeechunion.org/letter-to-provost-of-worcester-college-about-his-recent-apology-for-hosting-christian-event/ (accessed 29 September, 2021).

[3] See online: https://www.christianpost.com/news/uk-court-rules-evangelical-foster-agency-cant-refuse-gay-couples.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook (accessed 29 September, 2021).

[4] See Chris Newton, ‘The Government’s Free Speech Bill won’t fix universities if viewpoint diversity isn’t addressed too,’ Conservative Home [Sept. 21, 2021]; online at: https://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2021/09/chris-newton-the-governments-free-speech-bill-wont-fix-universities-if-viewpoint-diversity-isnt-addressed-too.html?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Wednesday%2022nd%20September%202021&utm_content=Wednesday%2022nd%20September%202021+CID_c1dd7b553916af4c24259e6f1d63fd55&utm_source=Daily%20Email&utm_term=The%20Governments%20Free%20Speech%20Bill%20wont%20fix%20universities%20if%20viewpoint%20diversity%20isnt%20addressed%20too (accessed 22 September, 2021).